Every franchise seeks ways to get younger audiences hooked on their brand. They want to capture their intended audience.
That’s why you get three or four different Star Trek shows on the air. Or the Marvel Cinematic Universe with its movies, spin-off live-action shows, and cartoons. It even has its own land at Disney California Adventure. Or Star Wars with its movies, spin-off shows, and land at Disney Parks… you get the idea.
Products and services, no matter the industry, aren’t any different. They need to discover new customers. You could say, it’s an ongoing mission to seek them out. But how do you know who you’re looking for? Especially if your product or service hasn’t even left the launch pad.
An intended audience consists of the specific people for whom creators design a message, product, service, or piece of content, identifying them by common characteristics like age, gender, interests, profession, cultural background, or other factors. When you understand the intended audience, you can tailor the content or message to be more effective and relevant for them.
For example, a children’s book is designed with an intended audience of young children, so it uses simple language and colorful illustrations. In marketing, knowing the intended audience is crucial for creating effective advertising campaigns that resonate with the target consumer audience.
Seek Out Your Intended Audience
We’ve made the case already that audiences are in and personas are out. But to recap, personas make presumptions based on a composite of a mythical “ideal” customer. Might as well seek out the Jabberwocky.
Targeted audiences let you connect with actual people who are most likely to use your product or service.
You can divide them by various demographics and characteristics in our research panel:
- Social
- Psychological
- Behavioral
- Occupation
- Location
They’re what we use exclusively at Helio for all our tests. Let’s now talk about how you find them.
Explore Your Consumer Space
Like an intrepid space explorer, venture into your consumer space. This is where your targeted audience roams. So you might as well too. Helio makes it easy for you to open a hailing frequency to them. You can upload your own audience or use one of our ready-made ones.
Validate Audience
First things first, we want to validate our intended audience. Our Test Template lets you evaluate your target audience to ensure you’ve segmented your market precisely.
You’ll learn:
- Insights into your audience
- How your campaigns perform
- How well your messaging resonates with your audience
- How to better maintain your segments
- And, more importantly, if it’s the right audience you’re reaching
Get started quickly by using our template:
Validate Audience Test
Are you reaching your target audience? Begin to answer that crucial question with this specialized customer survey.
Use this template for:
- Consumer Profiling
- Ensure your product’s unique selling point aligns with your target audience’s needs
- Verify previous understanding of important consumer attributes
But you can also go a level deeper with your audience.
Validate Product Interest
Once you assure yourself of having the right intended audience, also validate your product ideas with this Test Template.
You’ll learn:
- Insights into the overall demand for your product or service
- Weaknesses from competitors that you can exploit
- Customer sentiment for your product or service
- How to strengthen marketing efforts
- But best of all, you’ll build excitement for product launches!
Start quickly by using our template:
Validate Product Interest Test
Measure demand and gather gut reactions to your product from real consumers all before committing to an expensive launch.
Use this template for:
- Shopping Insights
- Inform product design by looking at weaknesses in competition
- Evaluate consumer sentiment towards your product
Understand Your Intended Audience’s Motivations
Now that you know who they are and whether they’d buy what you’re selling… it’s time to get to know your intended audience. Really know them.
You’ll learn:
- Genuine thoughts and experiences directly from real consumers
- Weak points in your checkout flows and overall consumer experience
- How to anticipate future consumer behaviors
- A better understanding of your market and audience
Get started quickly by using our template:
Consumer Motivation Test
Why do your customers engage with your brand? A consumer motivation survey is one way to both develop customer relationships and gain insight into your customer’s journey.
Use this template for:
- Consumer Profiling
- Document the unique effects of context on consumer behaviors with your brand
- Able to anticipate future behaviors by developing your consumer profiles
All this allows you to build an Action Map, which lets you make choices on what to work on next.
Action map to segment intended audiences
Recently, we collaborated with a skin care brand. We examined their intended audience and how they used the brand’s products. We used a combination of the methods above, which we put into an action map.
Action mapping helps you plan your strategy and streamlines your design process. Some of its benefits include:
- Aligning with business goals
- A clear plan of attack around specific goals, both for your audience and your business
- Consolidate information into an easy to parse manner
- Apply the knowledge learned from your audience
Here’s what our action map looks like:
The percentages represent the responses we gathered. It helps the skin care brand determine where their audience expects to find certain things regarding their products and services—things such as where they go to purchase swag and where they refer clients.
Understand your Intended Audience
To wrap up, understanding your intended audience is crucial for effective marketing and communication. Whether you’re a global movie franchise or a local business, the goal is the same: connect with your audience by understanding their needs, preferences, and cultural background. It’s not just about demographics; it’s about knowing who they are and what they want.
Today, we have advanced tools like Helio to help target and understand audiences better. These tools are essential for adapting to and meeting your audience’s changing needs. Remember, successful engagement is about more than identifying your audience; it’s about continuously learning from them and adjusting your strategies. By staying in tune with your audience and evolving with them, you can create strong, lasting relationships that go beyond just selling a product or service. Know your audience well – they’re the key to your success.
Reach your intended audience now with Helio today. Get started for free!
Intended Audience FAQs
An intended audience is a specific group of people identified for a message, product, service, or content, based on characteristics like age, gender, interests, or profession. Understanding this audience is crucial for creating content or marketing campaigns that are effective and relevant.
Knowing your intended audience allows you to create advertising campaigns and content that resonate specifically with that group, making your marketing efforts more targeted and efficient.
Targeted audiences are actual people most likely to use your product or service, identified by demographics and characteristics. Personas, in contrast, are hypothetical “ideal” customers based on presumptions, which may not always be accurate.
Helio provides tools to explore your consumer space, validate your intended audience, and gain insights through specialized customer surveys and test templates, helping you to effectively connect with your target audience.
To validate an intended audience, you can use Helio’s Test Template to evaluate your target audience‘s response to campaigns, assess message resonance, and ensure accurate market segmentation.
